Git Interactive Rebase

Overview

Interactive rebase (git rebase -i) opens an editor listing commits so you can reorder, edit, squash, or drop them before publishing. It is the primary tool for polishing a messy feature branch into a clean, reviewable history. Only rebase commits that have not been shared, since rewriting published history disrupts collaborators.

Syntax / Usage

Start the interactive session against a base, then choose an action per commit in the todo list.

# Edit the last 4 commits
git rebase -i HEAD~4

# Rebase everything since diverging from main
git rebase -i origin/main

# In the editor, replace "pick" with an action:
#   reword  - change the commit message
#   edit    - pause to amend the commit
#   squash  - merge into previous, combine messages
#   fixup   - merge into previous, discard message
#   drop    - remove the commit entirely

Examples

Squash three work-in-progress commits into one clean commit:

git rebase -i HEAD~3
# mark the first as "pick", the rest as "fixup"
# result: a single commit with the first commit's message

Split or amend an older commit using edit:

git rebase -i HEAD~5
# set the target commit to "edit"; the rebase pauses there
git commit --amend
git rebase --continue

Reorder commits so a fix lands before the feature that needs it—just rearrange the lines in the todo list and save.

Common Mistakes

• Rebasing commits already pushed and pulled by teammates
• Force pushing with --force instead of the safer --force-with-lease
• Deleting a commit with drop when you meant to squash it
• Getting stuck mid-rebase and forgetting git rebase --abort to reset
• Squashing so aggressively that meaningful history and context are lost

See Also

rebase commit branch